The thing that we have to come to grips with in a world of ubiquitous, powerful AI tools is how much it can do for us. The multiplier on human effort is unprecedented, and potentially disruptive. But this fact can often feel abstract. So I decided to run an experiment. I gave myself 30 minutes, and tried to accomplish as much as I could during that time on a single business project.

AI text-to-image tools can feel'magical' at first glance but have many problematic aspects in their training data and implementation right now that require solutions (and law changes) to make them more ethical and viable to use for commercial work. If you are happily avoiding producing full-blown illustrations with these tools, there are plenty of more ethical, smaller ways to include them in your process for a product or web design. Here are a few you can use today, and a direction I could see things evolving in future. If you're designing any kind of app with profiles or a social element (which let's face it, are a lot of consumer-facing apps these days), then avatars are likely something you work with quite a bit. It can sometimes be a bit painful to get realistic-looking mockups with placeholders or stock photo models, which is where AI can help.

You've built the perfect landing page. Your headline is simultaneously descriptive and urgent. You've got a hero image of someone holding your product, weeping with joy. Your explainer video becomes a surprise hit at Cannes (though it's controversially snubbed by the Academy). Your testimonials include Beyoncé and Tom Hanks, and you have to shrink the New York Times just to fit Disney into your "as seen in" logo spread.